Grounding Your Reader: taking care in disorienting story moments
Have you ever woken up the first morning of a vacation and wondered, where am I?
In the foggy moments of early consciousness your brain is grasping for landmarks, looking for something familiar. It’s disorienting for a moment, before you recall where you are and why you’re there.
When someone is reading your novel, they are having that experience repeatedly.
This happens most dramatically in the opening chapter of your novel, but it also occurs at the beginning of each new scene, and when you switch between point of view characters.
Any time that you quickly change location, day or time, or the people in your protagonist’s company, your reader is forced to reorient themself.
These moments of reorienting are pivotal for your reader. They are feeling off balance and are searching for answers. It’s your job as the author to quickly and succinctly ground the reader with just enough details that they understand where they are and what’s happening.
Leave them with too many details and they will be overwhelmed with information, unsure which parts are most important. But if you don’t give them enough information, they won’t have the context to understand what’s happening. Either way, you risk losing their attention.
Let’s look at the biggest, most important “where am I?” moment of any novel: the first chapter.
When your audience reads the first pages of your book they have no understanding of what they’ve been dropped into. Even if they’ve read the jacket copy, they don’t know the specifics of the precise moment they are occupying in the book.
As they are reading the opening pages, they are thinking:
Where and when am I?
Who am I? (As in, whose head am I in?)
Am I alone? If not, am I with friends or enemies?
Am I in a safe place? A dangerous place? An embarrassing situation?
Until the reader understands those basic things, their brain is quickly handling every piece of information available, looking for threats and discarding anything that doesn’t answer the questions above. They are looking for landmarks that can orient them.
This is an important time for you to give them precise pieces of information that help them feel grounded. It is not the time to introduce an extensive cast of characters, describe your fictional world in great detail, or explain large amounts of backstory.
I know it can be hard to hold back at this moment. After all, you are so excited about the story you’ve written, and you can’t wait to tell your audience all about it! But remember that you have a whole novel to reveal your creation to your reader.
Overwhelming them with details at any point of the story is never good, but it’s especially dangerous at the beginning of the novel when they’re not yet invested in the story.
How do you choose the information to include to provide the guidance your reader is looking for?
Here are some guidelines to help you decide.
Include specific details
When you’re trying to quickly convey a setting, the more specific the details you include the better. This does not mean you want to include loads of details. One very clear description is better than a paragraph of vague adjectives. Choose a few details that will best express what’s happening in the moment and work to make them as evocative as you can.
Share the protagonist’s feelings
If your main character is afraid, then the reader knows to be afraid. If they are annoyed, then the reader knows to be annoyed. Having this information from the protagonist helps set the tone for the reader and allows them to settle into the reality of the present moment in the story.
Consider that you can provide an extra layer of insight if the setting and the protagonist’s feelings are mismatched. For example, if the story opens in a setting that is calm or jovial, but the main character is feeling tense, worried, or fearful, that gives the reader clues that something is happening under the surface.
Avoid backstory that can’t be conveyed in one sentence
Early in the story it’s often sufficient to apply a label to something that holds significant meaning for the protagonist. For example, the protagonist referring to an “ex-best friend” lets the reader know how to feel toward a side character without wading into the history of the relationship just yet. Or if the protagonist mentions a place that always makes them feel sad or happy or nostalgic the reader knows that location holds meaning without sharing all the details in the moment.
Now, when you hint at backstory you’re making a promise to your reader that you will explain the details later. So make sure you eventually provide that detailed backstory in a later scene or chapter, when the reader is grounded in the story and ready to receive the information.
Limit the number of characters involved
If you were to show up to a gathering of new-to-you people, would you want to meet them rapid fire, each of them peppering you with their personal details? Of course not! That would be overwhelming and you likely wouldn’t remember much about anyone.
Your reader is in a similar position in the opening chapter of a book. Not only are they juggling many details about the setting and what is occurring in the scene, but if you introduce a whole cast of characters on top of that they are likely to get overwhelmed. Try to limit yourself to just the essential characters for your opening scene.
Whether it’s the opening pages of your book, or a scene change somewhere in the middle, abrupt shifts in time, space, or point of view require that your reader reorient themself in the story. Giving them cues to help them feel grounded in the details of the moment ensures that they feel guided throughout your story. It allows them to stay deeply immersed in the world that you’ve created, and that means they’ll keep turning the pages until The End.